Young speedster races at World Championships

Young speedster races at World Championships

A FORMER Brighton schoolboy has represented his country at an international athletics event.

Toby Harries was selected as part of Team GB’s 4x400m relay team after impressing in preceding competitions.

At the recent national championships the 21-year-old, who used to go to Brighton College, clocked a personal best of 46.36s in the heats, the second fastest 400m time ever recorded by a Sussex athlete.

This earned Toby a fifth placed finish in the competition.

As a result the Brighton Phoenix athlete earned the attention of Team GB and was invited to travel with the squad to Doha in Qatar for the World Athletics Championships, a

ten-day event which started late last month.

Speaking to British Athletics TV ahead of the competition he said: “I’m extremely excited. If I’m honest it was 50 50 to me even getting here.

“Recently in training I definitely feel I’m worthy of being here but I can’t wait to just get out in front of the crowd and just do my thing and hopefully perform exactly how I should.”

He described training with Team GB as like being in “a different league” and said he was getting used to having other people with him on the track as he had always been an “isolation athlete” and trained alone.

Toby was selected to compete in the 4x400m relay team, an event which Team GB has traditionally won medals in, and was set to run in the second leg of the race.

He received the baton well and ran his leg of the race in a time which was comfortably less than 50 seconds.

But, at the end of his stint, Toby slipped as he handed the baton to his teammate Rabah Yousif and was unable to pass it on, instead tumbling on to the track with the baton still in his hand.

The commentator labelled it as a “pitfall of the relay” as Toby crouched down with his head in his hands before being ushered off the track by stewards.

The championships were disappointing overall for Team GB as it finished sixth in the overall medal table – behind Ethiopia, China, Jamaica, Kenya and the United States.

The team achieved five medals, its lowest total since they won three at the 2005 event in Helsinki.

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